France is broken. AI imbalance?

[RDeluxe]

I must admit that France frustrates me (and I'm French). I'm playing as Britanny, and I'm around 1740. Combined with other problems in the game (too many negative events, costing thousands of ducats, popping rebels everywhere, etc) I have to say that my end-game is not pleasant at all.

As Britanny, there's nothing you can possibly do against France. I have tried a dozen time to get to war, and I won some of them, but only thanks to 10 years of blockade, and all my lands were occupied. I can only agree with the "dumb coalition AI" thing : France, against Portugal, GB, Spain, Sweden and myself (I'm a superpower, thanks to a ton of colonies) usually ends by a White peace, or worse.

Their central position (when your allies come from everywhere), their coordination compared to your allies and their super-over-mega military skills make them pretty horrible. I think that my presence (I took Anjou and Normandie in the early-game) stopped them from becoming a monster : I'm always gathering a huge coalition against them, so they did not have the possibility to expand as much as they wanted to.

 

[Shynka]

In my Tuscany game I managed to actually get a PU over a fairly strong France. This was pretty easy to achieve. First, me and Castille would go into a war against France whilst it was at war with someone else, and while Castille sieged, I destroyed the French army with my 40k~. We made France release a good chunk of the South, but it reclaimed quite a bit of it. But Dauphine and Burgundy remained loyal to me and Spain. Then afterwards I managed to get a RM with France (Took some improvement, and France didn't dislike me that much since it were the Spaniards who initiated the wars against them) but by this point Spain decided to go full annoying mode and broke alliance and treated me like a rival. So instead I allied to Austria, and I waited. Then the perfect opportunity presented itself - France got nearly overran by rebels. Their armies dropped to something like 35k, and half their country was occupied. I claimed the throne. I stepped in and destroyed the French armies without losing that many men by using a sort-of exploit: I would wait until the 20k French stack would get into battle with the protestants, and then move my army into that province using forced march. By the time the French army finished fighting the protestants, it would have 0 or near to 0 morale and they simply both dissolved to my superior forces. After that it was simply a question of mopping everything up. The French largely defeated the protestants, so all I had to do was to mop it all up. In fact, I left one protestant stack up, and waited until they sieged a province. After they moved I'd move my army in, and assault the small 300 strong rebel garrison. I know my game was lucky and gamey, but it does show that France can be defeated. In my Muscovy game on the other hand Britain and Spain completely partitioned France without major trouble.

Although I do agree that in both wars I fought against them rebels were a huge factor. In the first war there were something like 55 000 pretender rebels running around, whilst the second one had around 40 000 protestant rebels.

 

[lpro]

I find it frustrating that in my 5+ games France and England almost always achieve unification within 50 years. This is ahistorical -- Great Britain was not formed until the 18th century for a reason! and France took quite awhile to harmoniously integrate all of its fractious vassals. It would be great if upcoming patches/mods gave some sort of extra bonus to countries/regions that historically proved difficult to integrate like Scotland/Ireland for example. It is absurd that France is united in 1495 despite multiple costly coalitions or that Scotland is immediately annexed to GB within 50 years. This could be reversed by making French vassal annexation take longer and proceed more slowly so that it is more of a challenge--and 'Fractious vassal' events whereby vassals may break vassalization during calls to war, if they are defeated on the field of battle, war exhaustion is too high, or legitimacy is too low (and even vassalize to the enemy power). I may be getting my history wrong but I believe that vassals often changed sides during the Hundred Years War. A 'Fractious Scots' event making it harder to annex Scottish provinces would also make some sense to me. I recognize that some of these are coded in via revolts but they never seem to be a problem. There has to be some way to code in the tendency of some of these territories to remain culturally distinct--as is, Scots are easy to defeat and a total walkover and as France it is laughably easy to achieve territorial unity. I would like these to be actual achievements! As a player character I only manage to stop England from annexing Scotland by constantly stationing some 20,000 French infantry in Fife to follow the Scottish army.

I would also like to see religious turmoil become more of an issue for both England and France since via the rebel mechanism it seems totally underwhelming. Huguenots or English Catholics should be able to emerge as quasi political entities. This would imply making currenty 'rebel' groups like French huguenots or English catholics more like infrapolitical player AIs, say, that only try to conquer within the limits of the kingdom and pursue your armies! Would it be possible to code rebels to actually go after your forces if they are superior rather than only siege in order to make them a more exciting, dynamic threat?

 

[takedown47]

I find it frustrating that in my 5+ games France and England almost always achieve unification within 50 years. This is ahistorical -- Great Britain was not formed until the 18th century for a reason! and France took quite awhile to harmoniously integrate all of its fractious vassals. It would be great if upcoming patches/mods gave some sort of extra bonus to countries/regions that historically proved difficult to integrate like Scotland/Ireland for example.

My mod called Better Diplomacy fixes this. Great Britain can only be formed by England after 1660. If England owns the British Isles after conquering or inheriting Scotland before 1660 they can form Britannia (the empire from CK2). If the reverse happens and Scotland conquers northern England they can form Albion which gives them cores on the rest of the British Isles region.

 

[Mercadi]

And here's my rant, behold.

I played as Portugal, and united all of Spain under my foot, but the closer I got to France, the worse our relations were (border friction, multiplied by the fact that we had bordering colonies everywhere). Eventually they declared war ("colonialism" was the reason for it), and -- I got completely overwhelmed by never-ending stacks of 45k, on every continent (3 in Europe, 1 in South America, and one in Africa). Pretty sure that France had less provinces than I did, they had worse economy and infrastructure, and I controlled important trade nodes. And yet they completely dominated in a war against me on land.

To make things worse, in the middle of that war Bohemia DOW'd France (Great Britain, who was in PU with Sweden and Ireland) were their allies, and they got crushed as well.
Made me ragequit that game, which doesn't happen often. Now, I'm ok with losing sometimes, but I don't see any future development, besides inevitable complete conquest by France.
If Portugal, Sweden, GB, and Bohemia cannot do anything together about the French aggression, there's no point playing on the same continent with them.. I'd go to americas, or africa, but France is there too

 

[Talq]

I am yet to see France fail. Or Poland, for that matter. And I'm on my 20th odd game.

Yet my first game, they (France) were off the map 60 years in.

And if they failed often (absent human intervention) that would be a serious issue in its own right.

Historically, France was a dominant power in Europe... but not by 1475. In my experience, the chief issue with EU4 is that none of the things that held France back (by 150 years!) are a factor at all.

You are probably being a tad cutesy with the word 'dominant'. Historically in 1444, France had already shocked Italy and would soon shock England with its military capabilities. If you were next to them and fighting them, you probably should expect to get your butt kicked.

 

[hitchens]

I find it frustrating that in my 5+ games France and England almost always achieve unification within 50 years. This is ahistorical -- Great Britain was not formed until the 18th century for a reason! and France took quite awhile to harmoniously integrate all of its fractious vassals

EU is about conquest. Its not Victoria. Johan even states so when the game was in development and people asked how the gameplay would be.

 

[unmerged(693992)]

One interesting thing I spotted about France in my latest game (Netherlands) was how they consistently managed to stay one Mil tech ahead of me. At some point I had 999 Mil points, full plutocracy, the HRE bonus (tiny, but still), 5% neighbor bonus and a Mil-tech advisor and the "ahead of time" penalty was still too large for me to catch up to them.

At some points this could obviously get nasty.

 

[BlckKnght]

Just a brief reminder that vulgar language is not allowed on the forums, even if its hidden behind ****. Complaints are fine, just keep it clean (and constructive, if possible).

 

[brifbates]

And here's my rant, behold.

I played as Portugal, and united all of Spain under my foot, but the closer I got to France, the worse our relations were (border friction, multiplied by the fact that we had bordering colonies everywhere). Eventually they declared war ("colonialism" was the reason for it), and -- I got completely overwhelmed by never-ending stacks of 45k, on every continent (3 in Europe, 1 in South America, and one in Africa). Pretty sure that France had less provinces than I did, they had worse economy and infrastructure, and I controlled important trade nodes. And yet they completely dominated in a war against me on land.

To make things worse, in the middle of that war Bohemia DOW'd France (Great Britain, who was in PU with Sweden and Ireland) were their allies, and they got crushed as well.
Made me ragequit that game, which doesn't happen often. Now, I'm ok with losing sometimes, but I don't see any future development, besides inevitable complete conquest by France.
If Portugal, Sweden, GB, and Bohemia cannot do anything together about the French aggression, there's no point playing on the same continent with them.. I'd go to americas, or africa, but France is there too

One HUGE thing to remember is that colonies/overseas holdings contribute almost nothing to your military. France is generally a big manpower-rich blob centered around its capital with everything contributing to that military. You could have 3x as many provinces as them but if 85% of yours are overseas you will still not match them even without any ideas they might have picked up. Those provinces help you rack up money, as does your trade strength, but if you don't apply that money to your military might then it is useless against a France type powerhouse. If you have money and brains then you should be able to deal with an ai powerhouse. if you instead try to go toe to toe thinking your overseas empire is going to make you stronger than them militarily then you'll soon learn that is not the case.

 

[jockedahl]

Imo the Lucky nations modifiers are too imbalanced. Some nations might need them more than others but they are too powerful for france. France is lucky just by the way they start the game. Strongest nation in europe except for the ottomans. Hight tax, good Monarch, Huge manpower and force limits and extremely good unique national ideas.

 

[Wuddel]

Every country has the same AI. With that said, the AI doesn't seem to be particularly good at fighting as part of an alliance against a larger power.

This. It slightly annoys me to see two stacks of 18 regiments (single country) running around the map and get owned my a single 24 stack.

Everytime the player gets involved it breaks. I played a bunch of games as Portugal, and when I help England even in the slightest (bit of blockading and siegeing) France crumbles eventually.

 

[Bikker]

It seems France either steamrolls or gets steamrolled. In my games spain is often occupying half of france.
Wouldnt a higher penalty for occupying foreign cultures help from nations getting steamrolled (more revolts for either independence or defect to former nation)?

 

[hitchens]

It seems France either steamrolls or gets steamrolled. In my games spain is often occupying half of france

Yes. In my campaign they take turns occupying each other. I wonder what the triggers are.

 

[Grifen88]

Imo the Lucky nations modifiers are too imbalanced. Some nations might need them more than others but they are too powerful for france. France is lucky just by the way they start the game. Strongest nation in europe except for the ottomans. Hight tax, good Monarch, Huge manpower and force limits and extremely good unique national ideas.

Doesn't help them when they overextend though.

For the first part of the 16th century, half of mainland France is getting occupied for lulz by rebels, Nevers, Orleannais, or Spain in my game.

 

[aybarsalp]

my experience has been quite the opposite so far. i'm in my 4th game and i played my 3 previous ones till late 1700s (which is great actually. in eu3 i never ever reached 1600s, because it was getting too easy and boring-- well done paradox!). i played with spain, the ottomans, brandenburg->germany and my current game is muscovy right now. brandenburg and muscovy are ironman games. in all except for my spain game i've seen france lost all her vassals and southern france was eaten up by very very superior spain. in my brandenburg game (and i didn't have a single war agains france) i saw france completely gone. in my spain game i got the mediterranean coats of france easily after early 1500s. i've spent almost 2000 hours playing eu3 and never ever saw france in this condition--
after my experiences so far if i had to make a quick statement i could say france needs to be a lot stronger.

 

[marmot01]

While playing with Castille/Spain I was actually better off without minor allies (Portugal, Aragon) during wars with France. All the minors were doing was throwing 1000 men units against Frances 24-25000 armies, driving the warscore down, while I was desperately trying to siege Bearn or beat an isolated French army

 

[Zander]

Historically, France was a dominant power in Europe... but not by 1475. In my experience, the chief issue with EU4 is that none of the things that held France back (by 150 years!) are a factor at all.

You are probably being a tad cutesy with the word 'dominant'. Historically in 1444, France had already shocked Italy and would soon shock England with its military capabilities. If you were next to them and fighting them, you probably should expect to get your butt kicked.

The issue is not that France can beat Tuscany or England in 1444, or even that they can beat any power 1v1. It's that they routinely beat coalitions of Castille+England+the HRE while less than 100 years into the game.

 

[delling]

Just a small observation, that has been made before in the thread but might warrant repeating...

It seems like the problem might be in the AI handling in alliances, specifically when they consist of several 'larger' nations.

I'll speculate a bit and it might be that the AI works decently for smaller armies attaching to larger during wars (1-2k army from a minor attaching to a 15k army from a more powerful country). When the armies that should be combined are of similar size (or above a certain threshold) the AI just don't make that consideration....

 

[Bradeh]

In my games so far the 'historical' superpowers all fall apart. It's really annoying because I want to play somewhat historical. In my last game both Castille and Denmark fell under PU to me. The game before Portugal and France. I think the the AI needs to be stronger not weaker.